


It's no coincidence that Achilles was Greek.

by StepfordSnarker



Category: Dear White People (TV)
Genre: (To fill The Independent's staff), Canon Compliant, Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Spoilers for episodes 8-10, Swearing, The title is a pun.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2018-10-30 16:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10880295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StepfordSnarker/pseuds/StepfordSnarker
Summary: Silvio can handle critiquing Lionel’s bad journalistic habits— form, bias, superficiality, anything, but when Lionel stands up in Hancock Hall to confront President Fletcher,The Winchester Independent’seditor in chief is for once totally disarmed.EDIT: Lol I wrote this when the show came out. After watching Season 2 this fanfic is c a n c e l l e d.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so starved for DWP material that I had to write some of my own! Also, writing for Silvio and Lionel is fun because I am also a gay editor in chief of a newspaper.

Lionel’s writing was enthusiastic to say the least. The interview had evidently gone better than _The Independent_ could have expected. Silvio questioned Lionel several times to ensure that, yes, Troy really had been on record for all of that, and the paper’s copy editors were practically fucking assbackwards over Silvio’s push to cut the article. This reaction was mostly because they’d already gone through the entire editing process, but also partially because of how often Lionel’s articles had been pushed forward despite a lack of journalistic objectivity, failed ledes, or fluff.

Not that Lionel was assigned fluff articles very often, they’d mentioned.

“And what does that mean?” Silvio swiveled in his chair.

“You give him special treatment on a daily basis, and now you want us to cut his article because what? It’s not objective? When has that stopped you from publishing him before?”

“We can’t publish it because _Brooke_ ,” Silvio began, noting the predictable pop-up of round glasses in the corner of his vision. _“Brooke_ has already written a feature on Troy. Now wouldn’t that look like special treatment of Mr. Fairbanks?”

Of course it wouldn’t. Troy was a public figure after winning the election— not to say he wasn’t one before. The papers were expected to cover him in what Silvio deemed superfluous amounts.

“He’s a public figure,” Copy Editor Tweedledee said.

“We’re expected to cover him,” Copy Editor Tweedledum said.

Of fucking course.

“It doesn’t read like hard news—” Silvio tried again.

_“Troy is a legacy kid and student body president.”_ Silvio was interrupted by his own voice, though it came from Brooke’s audio recorder rather than his throat. _“How is he a victim?”_

_“Let me write the piece and I’ll show you,”_ recorded Lionel said.

And just like that, the eyes of Tweedledee and Tweedledum turned on him with the self-satisfied smirk known only to asshole journalists who have just unearthed a juggernaut of a story.

“If Lionel was supposed to write about how Troy’s a victim, you couldn’t have expected it to be hard news,” Brooke said.

“Shut up, Brooke.”

Silvio stood and rubbed his face, eyes catching onto the “Sorry!” post-it note left by Lionel on his desk.

“I mean, not to defend that godawful article, especially when mine was objectively better, but you _are_ kind of responsible for this.”

“No, he wasn’t supposed to write the damn thing at all,” Silvio grumbled. “I assigned him the parade. You were there for that. And he even failed to find fucking the fucking story on  _Pastiche!_ I won’t reward bad behavior by letting this go through.”

“Lionel’s article has a bit of a more…” Tweedledee trailed off.

_“Human_ perspective,” Tweedledum finished. They were like clockwork.

That tends to happen when the interviewer is in love with his interviewee, Silvio thought. The memory of finding them together in his office after hours, Silvio’s nice scotch in Lionel’s hand, Satan’s drunken retching in Troy’s esophagus, found its way into his office again. Silvio propped his hand on his hip as his eyes swept to the hard copy on his desk.

“You know what?” he scoffed. “You can publish it _after_ I go through it. Now shoo, I need to figure out how to expel all this blatant hero-worship, pity-partying of his. Leave Fairbanks with some shred of dignity.”

And they left.

Silvio dropped back down into his chair, picked up the hard copy of Lionel’s article, and propped his feet up on the desk. Brooke, who hadn't retreated in the style of the copy editors, craned her neck as if she could read the article through the matte white stack. The editor turned to achieve some privacy and set his favorite red pen to work.

 

“How’d it go?” Silvio’s coffee mug rested at the tip of his mouth.

“Huh?” Lionel looked up from where his fingers interlaced themselves in his lap. He’d been called into this office more times than anyone else on staff, he was sure.

Silvio scoffed. “Your first interaction with Troy after the debut of your strangely Basil Hallward-esque ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President?’ How’d it go?”

“Uh. Fine. It went fine,” Lionel said. “Better than I expected, actually.”

Silvio’s brows raised in surprise and further inquiry.

“N-not like a LOT better. He still got on me for it. Just, like, the dean didn't freak about it. Coco was pretty bad though...”

“Got on you for it?”

“That wasn’t a euphemism!”

“No shit,” Silvio laughed. “I meant ‘Why did he get onto you?’ He was on record, right?”

“Well...” Lionel pulled the sleeves of his shirt to dispel some of his creeping anxiety. “Define ‘on record?’”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Higgins?”

“Look—”

“You _told_ me he was on record.”

“Well, technically he was on record at first. And then he never stopped being on record. Or started being off record, you know?”

Silvio placed the mug on his desk and crossed his arms, adopting about as an intimidating presence as he could.

“You're lucky he didn't throw a fit,” He said, eyes flicking over Lionel’s face. “You sure know how to pick ‘em.”

Lionel sat in silence, then spoke. “Troy seems better off now,” he murmured.

The door leading into the journalism sector opened and closed, bringing about a flood of other staff members with muffled footsteps and voices outside of the editor’s office. Silvio inhaled as he came to lean against the side of his desk.

“Piece of advice, Lionel.” His dark eyes, rimmed with his own human version of the circles mugs leave on countertops, looked too deep and too understanding. “If your goals are to help friends and direct people’s reactions to reality, don't go into journalism.”

“But—”

“I’m serious. All you’ll do is let yourself down. And that's the thing with reality: there’ll be disappointments regardless of what angle you come from, but living in this dreamworld or whatever where viewpoint is associated with the greater good is just going to mess with your head when what you intended is not what ends up happening.”

“Viewpoint?”

“Your bias,” Silvio sighed. “Our job is reporting facts. That's why we’re _The Independent._ I don't want to stick you with fluff until you learn to be slantless, but you bet your gay-in-theory-not-in-practice ass that I’ll do it.”

“Okay,” Lionel said. He wanted to add, that was harsh and i haven't seen _you_ being particularly “active” ever. in fact, the most i’ve seen of you has been bailing on a theater party to uphold your crazy workaholic persona and find the dean’s interview transcripts with several students including sam white, which congratulations because i guess that was a good journalistic dig, but also are you really that ignorant to the repercussions of telling people sam sent the invites? it doesn’t matter to them if she proved the racism at winchester; they said that somehow a young black woman is the source of all this contention. they attempted to discredit her and therefore the movement at large. thank god i got the chance to warn her so she could tell everyone herself because letting the independent handle that would have been a disaster.

But Lionel didn’t say any of that.

“Okay? Really, just okay?” Silvio’s gaze could bore into him if he stayed long enough.

“Yeah,” Lionel said. “I got it.”

Silvio waved in another staff member— Tate? Alysha? One of the copy editors. They looked so different, yet Lionel couldn’t tell them apart for crap. As he stood to leave, he heard his name once more.

“I’m giving you the yearbook mixup article until I can trust you with top news again,” Silvio said. “You'll do great.”

 

The yearbook article and two more passed without a hitch. As Lionel pulled up a new web page to check Facebook for half a second, Silvio appeared behind him, placing a hand on Lionel’s left shoulder. Silvio clucked his tongue. “That doesn’t look like work to me.”

“That’s because the universe is a cruel dame who likes to inconvenience me at every opportunity she can.” Lionel sighed. “I _was_ working.”

“Relax, I know.” Silvio patted his shoulder once, let go, and moved to sit in the vacant chair to Lionel’s right. “I know I didn’t mention it in public review, but your student art exhibit article was phenomenal. And it’s not an area you tend to focus on, but it was formulaically flawless.”

“...Is that worth it though?”

Silvio just stared at him in reply.

“Well, sure it’s got the lede and the who, what, when, where, and why, but the whole time I was writing that, it felt dead.”

“You forgot ‘how,’ and it didn’t read that way.”

“Are you serious?”

“It’s no protest article, that’s for sure,” Silvio agreed. “And not some deep revelation, but the arts need coverage too. Even if the head of that program is a totally incorrigible asshole with an ego level high enough to climb and subsequently kill yourself by jumping down to his IQ level.”

Lionel’s eyes widened. “Whoa— who? Are you cool?”

“Mm? Oh, yeah. It’s fine.” The corner of Silvio’s mouth curled upwards. “Jordan Reyes. Senior head director of the Contemporary-Expressionist-Blah-Blah-Blah Art Society. They're a talented group, but he’s a dick. It’s good that you didn’t have to interview him.”

“How do you know him?”

Silvio bit his lip and breathed out.

“Most of us aren't so fortunate to have the ‘crush on a straight roommate’ phase pan out as scarlessly as yours has.”

“Wait, he's head of an art department, and he’s straight?”

“I know, right?”

They both laughed at that.

“Straight male artists are weird,” Silvio said. “They have this all-consuming desire to compensate for being art-aligned, even though the subject is traditionally associated with famous historical men anyway. But Leonardo Da Vinci was gay, so…”

“I see the concern,” Lionel added playfully.

“Jordan likes the idea of flirting with guys when he sees some kind of counterculture aesthetic in it, but otherwise, he’s disgusted by the overlap of queer groups and the art department. He was constantly proving how uber-hetero he is when we lived together, but I guess I liked him before I caught on.”

“Oh.”

_“Anyway,”_ Silvio clapped his hands together. “Your new assignment is the Town Hall. And it might be a good idea to interview Sam White about her protest, but don't forget quotes from the other side.”

A cautious smile slowly spread across Lionel’s face. “I can do that.”

“Good.”

As Silvio walked back into his office, Lionel turned to his desktop to start his interview questions.

 

November 12, 2017.

“I got the interview with Sam,” Lionel said tersely, dropping his outline on Silvio’s desk and turning to leave.

“Whoa, whoa. Wait just a second.”

“...What?”

Silvio looked at Lionel like he was an idiot. But that was the editor’s expression so often that Lionel was tempted to attribute the look to just being Silvio’s face.

“...How’d it go?”

“Do you ever ask the other writers for recounts of their individual interviews?”

“Only when it interests me.”

“And this interests you?”

“Tell me what quotes you plan to use.”

Silvio kicked his feet up on the desk and waited oh-so-patiently.

“Wouldn't that spoil the article?” Lionel quipped.

“This is _The Independent,_ not a blockbuster. We may be self-congratulatory, but we sure as hell aren't trying to give _Pastiche_ a run for their money on that particular front.”

“Uh, okay. It was a pretty short talk though.”

“Why?”

“She wanted to go off record.”

Silvio lifted a single brow. Lionel wished he knew how to do that.

“Any newsworthy dig?”

“No,” Lionel lied. “Just some of her more ‘radical’ ideas. People wouldn't be surprised to hear them, but she was worried about ‘being the villain in another Troy article.’”

“Eh.” Silvio picked up the article outline and quickly scanned it. “It doesn't show great journalistic perseverance to let her off that easy.”

Lionel wanted to say, you literally told me i went too far in the “happy birthday, mr. president” article, but i guess as long as it's only the so-called radical bsu kids that we’re getting in-depth quotes from it’s fine because the readers will perceive them as overly sensitive compared to the other groups quoted.

But Lionel didn't say any of that. After all, you can't control how an audience reacts to information.

“Go ahead then,” Silvio said. “Play the quote.”

_“Have you been to a Winchester Town Hall?”_ recorded Sam White asked. _”They're so regimented, even Kim Jong-Un is like, ‘Guys, chill. Let somebody talk.’ But we can't be swept under the rug this time.”_

Lionel switched off the recording before Sam’s mention of whatever Troy and Coco were “peddling” for the administration.

“That's it?” Silvio replied.

“I said it was short…” Lionel mumbled.

“Whatever, you have a few more hours before the Hall. We’ll sit in for the president’s answers and you can get a second interview with Sam after the protest. I’ll send Peter to get a photo while we’re inside.”

“Thanks,” Lionel said, but he didn't really want to thank him at all.

 

_The Independent’s_ sector was just quiet enough to be unsettling without being eerie. The staff had parted ways for the day, but Lionel remained, determined to find information on the “big donors” after Sam let loose that they were planning to integrate Armstrong-Parker. He remembered overhearing Coco enthusiastically gushing to Troy about meeting the Hancocks.

He brought up a web page and typed “Hancocks Donors Winchester” into the search bar. The click of the keyboard rattled through the otherwise silent room.

 

Lionel knocked on the editor’s office door but entered without permission. Silvio was seated at his desk, summer fingers pressed to frigid winter temples as he answered the millions of questions Brooke had somehow spawned over an article on Starbucks Secret Menu culture. When Silvio’s eyes met with Lionel’s, he looked almost elated for an excuse to dodge Brooke.

“Um, we're kind of busy here,” she said to Lionel as he pushed past her. “I’m sorry, I thought we had a procedure—”

“This is important,” Lionel cut her off.

Her glare flicked to the editor.

“He’s right.” Silvio made a “shoo”-motion with his hand, and Brooke left with an audible, “hmph.”

Lionel sat down across from Silvio.

“What is all this?”

“The Hancocks are into a whole lot of hooey,” Lionel said.

“Say ‘shit’ just once,” Silvio condescended.

“It seems benign, but they fund cases that are against affirmative action! Against voter rights for minorities! Against—”

“Lionel, this wasn’t your assignment.” Silvio’s hands splayed out in a shrug that implied, ‘I’m right, you’re wrong, and don’t question me.’ But Silvio didn’t say any of that.

“This is bigger than my assignment. The administration is in bed with bigots.” Lionel lifted the packet of documents he had brought and pointed to the first page’s title, then smiled at his proof. “Look at this.”

He placed it on the desk between the two young men, then pointed again to the same spot.

“Every year the Hancocks give ten million—”

Silvio sat up, removing his feet from the desk. Perhaps he thought the literalness of putting his foot down would end the conversation. “The Hancocks are absolutely off-limits,” he warned. His stare was the threat of black clouds and a heavy-weighted atmosphere, but Lionel was prepared to drive through this storm. Silvio stood to close his office door.

“Why?” Lionel asked. “This is _The Independent_. We can go after whoever we want.”

“This paper is independent of Winchester because it’s paid for by its founders—” Silvio walked to the wooden drawers behind him and pulled an old, framed newspaper from its depths. “—The Hancocks.” He passed the frame to Lionel, defeat in his voice.

“Just once can you focus on the story I assigned you?”

The yellowing paper inside the casing referenced the collection of black students within the AP house. “What Are They Planning?” it read. Lionel reflected at once on Sam’s words from the interview: _“The minute black kids sit together in the cafeteria, white folks cry self-segregation. Never mind that white people have always sat together and always will.”_

“Fine,” Lionel replied. He set the paper aside. “I’ll see you at the Town Hall.”

Silvio leaned forward and crossed his arms on the desk.

“How about ‘fuck?’ Can you say ‘fuck?’”

_“No.”_

 

It was ironically fitting that the meeting was to be held in Hancock Hall, so fitting that Lionel turned to give Silvio a look as they climbed the steps up to the prestigious stone building. Silvio held that eye contact for no more than a single moment, his smoke-brown gaze curtained suddenly by long black eyelashes. His attention flitted instead to Peter, whom he instructed to go photograph the swelling group of protesters. Lionel licked his chapped lips, adjusted his glasses, and stepped inside. He was still deciding whether to go through with asking that simple question: “How much money are we worth to you?”

A hand— now familiar, predictable— pressed firmly but not unkindly on his shoulder. Brooke, Tate, and Alysha passed them by while Silvio monopolized Lionel’s attention. “Sam seems to be caught up right now, but text her immediately so that you can finish your interview with her afterwards. The president doesn’t tend to get terribly in-depth when he’s answering these questions—”

Which Lionel already knew, thank you very much.

“—so make sure you do some statistics research while you’re writing to back up whatever these kids ask about. Jaylen has access to a database of information on Winchester’s students and faculty, and Tate is good at explaining numbers if you need help simplifying the data for your article.”

“Thanks,” Lionel said, again not feeling too thankful. “I think I’m good, though.”

“What?” Silvio furrowed his brow.

Lionel just shrugged and went to take his seat. Silvio followed, perplexed.

The red velveteen chairs which dotted the hall were completely filled in a matter of minutes. The Winchester podium stood idle beside a sign reading “RACE AND GUN SAFETY / 6:00 PM.” In front of the podium, five old white men and Dean Fairbanks sat, all attempting to appear cognizant and helpful. Chants from the protests could be heard from inside, but it appeared that most guests were doing their damnedest to ignore the sound.

Coco Conners came to rid the podium of its vacancy. “On the behalf of CORE and the entire faculty of Winchester, I’d like to welcome you.”

Lionel thought back to the alert he had rigged to send soon, directing everyone on campus to _The Independent’s_ website, where his exposé of the Hancocks would take precedence over Brooke’s Starbucks Culture Controversy. He smiled, feeling again that he was worth something to the BSU, the campus, or hell, even on a minuscule level, to the movement overall. He hadn’t felt that way since leading that group to wreck the blackface party.

Silvio, growing suspicious, had caught sight of Lionel’s smile. “What?” The editor whispered. “Why do you look so happy? New Star Trek movie? D&D club promote you to president? Found a porn star Troy look-alike?”

“Nooo,” Lionel said. He was pretty sure that Silvio could go on for another few paragraphs if he allowed him. “Just excited to be off fluff-duty.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I mean it.”

President Fletcher spoke. “Let’s open this up for questions.”

Coco walked into the crowd and handed the mic to the vapid Kelsey Phillips.

“I just wanted to say thank you so much for my comfort dog,” she said.

“Oh you're welcome,” Dean Fairbanks said. “Go on.”

“That's all,” Kelsey replied.

Lionel and Silvio met eyes again, and Silvio rolled his as if to say, ‘Winchester would make a better profit if they just gave that girl’s degree to her dog.’ This was going to be a long meeting.

“Okay!” Coco smiled painfully. “Anybody with a question?”

She called up one man who spoke while a steadily growing tide of “We pay tuition to this place! Get your guns up out my face!” collapsed against the building, each new repetition clearer than the last. Then, Coco called on the student who Lionel remembered had self-identified as a fiscal conservative, only to be shot down by one of Troy’s friends.

“Why is campus security armed at all?”

“Well, that's a great question. As part of our university policy, we make a promise to our students and to their parents to keep everyone safe.”

A woman among the crowd cried out, “Reggie didn't feel too safe!”

Coco interrupted, with her pearl-braceleted wrist raised and a saccharine smile across her pink lips. “Okay! We’re almost out of time.”

“Oh no,” Dean Fairbanks said. “Already?”

This cued the president to say his clearly rehearsed, “Surely we could have one more.”

Silvio sighed and turned to Lionel.

“You’re really going to need to push for Sam to answer your questions,” he said. “It looks like we’re getting jack shit from this meeting.”

Coco began to search the crowd for a final inquirer. Lionel raised his hand, though his heart was beating rapidly in his chest. His fingers were limp and kind of pathetic-looking, but Coco called him anyway. Or maybe she chose him intentionally. She handed the mic to him with a, “Here you go, sweets.”

As Lionel stood, Silvio managed to look more confused than he had before. Surely Lionel knew that he couldn’t quote himself for the article. Surely he knew he was cutting down his potential quotes by volunteering a question, but could he have a specific answer from the president in mind? Silvio blinked, watching him walk off to the podium.

Lionel, feeling anxious, paused to look around at the crowd. He reminded himself of his interview with Sam, of her radio-perfect voice assuring him that he was a lot braver than he thought. He pushed his glasses up on his nose with an index finger. “Lionel Higgins,” he said. “Sophomore.”

The clamor from outside, now consisting of three distinct protest groups, rose. “Just a quick question for President Fletcher.” The old white men and Dean Fairbanks nodded.

“How much money are we worth to you?”

“I’m sorry, young man?” Fletcher asked.

Coco came up behind Lionel and grabbed his mic, but he’d learned in this instance, you don’t let go. She struggled to take it from him. “What I hear Lionel saying is—”

He jerked the mic away. “There are 234 black undergrads on this campus. That’s roughly 55 million dollars, assuming we make it all four years. And yet you’re willing to disregard our right to safe spaces?”

Silvio leaned his head on his hand in feigned indifference, but his eyes were wide. Evidently Lionel didn’t need Jaylen for numbers, but what the fuck was this kid doing?

President Fletcher leaned forward. “What are you talking about?”

“The Hancocks!” Lionel yelled.

Coco tried again to snatch the mic, but Lionel turned to avoid her hand. “The namesake of this very hall.”

Silvio sat back in his chair, fingers tapping irritably against his upper thigh. Brooke, who (through snooping) was aware that the Hancocks had founded _The Independent,_ seemed caught between fear for the future of their paper and smugness at the fact that Lionel was the one ruining it.

“I wonder if anyone here knows just how much power this administration is willing to give them over a 10 million dollar donation.” He was now walking through the guest aisles, microphone in hand, to escape Coco, who was quickly advancing. “Especially when this school’s endowment is $14 billion! With a B!”

Coco’s chase was halted by a woman who stood up suddenly.

Silvio shook his head. “What the fuck,” he mouthed.

“In fact,” Lionel continued, now unobstructed. “Because of the protest outside, they're using their money to blackmail the administration into _integrating_ Armstrong-Parker!”

A lively commotion ensued, even drowning the thunderous protests outside. Fletcher turned to Dean Fairbanks, looking agitated, but Lionel could not hear what was said.

“That's enough, young man,” the dean commanded.

Lionel dug into his pants pocket and pulled out his phone. “Right about…” He hit the button to send out the campus-wide alert. “...now, you should all be receiving an alert from the _Winchester Independent_ website.” Then Coco finally succeeded in her quest for the mic.

“There you can read all about this!” Lionel yelled.

A chorus of cellphone chimes, beeps, and blips filled Hancock Hall. The chatter rose. People stood. Even the men at the table pulled phones from their expensive suit jackets to check.

“AP House Held Ransom” by Lionel Higgins lit up the front page of _The Winchester Independent_. Silvio looked up from his screen, furious.

Some people shouted while others muttered. Silvio scrolled down to the article’s pop quote. _“All this over a 10 million dollar drop in a 14 billion dollar bucket.”_

Irate, he stood and stormed toward Lionel, and Lionel walked back toward him.

“What part of ‘the Hancocks are off-limits’ possessed you to post a story about the motherfucking Hancocks?!” Silvio’s hand came to sit on his hip, a common affectation of his that Lionel no longer found intimidating.

“Silvio, can you shut up?”

“Do you even know how much shit I’m gonna be in?”

But the editor suddenly lost his footing. He looked slowly up, meeting Lionel at an equal level, one into which they’d never quite settled before. “What’d you say?”

“I said, can you shut the _fuck up_?”

As the panic and outrage of others amalgamated around the two, Silvio’s mind condensed itself into war between his immense surprise, his immense anger, and his immense attraction. He moved his lips once, twice in fruitless search of a reply. “Listen, I just—”

“No,” Lionel said. _“You_ listen.”

And he did.

“This is important to me,” Lionel wanted to say. “And if you want me on _The Independent,_ these are the types of stories I’m gonna write. And if you don’t like it, then you can just go fuck yourself.”

Lionel wanted to say it, and for once, he did say it. Mostly. Except for the fact that Silvio’s mouth and hands pressed themselves against him somewhere between “fuck” and “yourself.”

The kiss was startling and exciting and exactly something he never thought he wanted, not in the middle of Hancock Hall and not from the editor in chief of his newspaper. The hands which had before guided him from his shoulders or indicated errors in submitted manuscripts were now warm and assuring against the sides of his face. Lionel shut his eyes, and the tension in his body diffused. The contact lasted three beats— too long to be some kind of mistake.

When Silvio pulled away, the world was gentle and dreamlike in a way that it shouldn’t have been considering their surroundings. It was like waking up on a Saturday morning to news blasting from the television or a whirring vacuum. As Lionel opened his eyes, brows raised in abject bewilderment, he noticed that Silvio’s gaze fixed first against his own and then down on his lips. But the moment was short-lived.

The sound of fracturing glass splintered the room’s atmosphere. Troy had pushed a shovel through the ornate doors nearby. It was an unnatural sight— a charming, well-dressed man with the highest social standing of any other student in the room positioned so shamefully between Hancock Hall and the protesters, between his father and the people who could have been his friends. In the midst of Lionel’s catharsis, Troy had found his own in a shattered reputation.

In no time at all, three policemen had the son of Dean Fairbanks with his hands behind his back. There was a paralyzing silence in the air, the vast majority of the crowd knowing exactly what was at stake here.

Dean Fairbanks screamed, “Don’t shoot!”

Troy was placed in the police car, flashing electric blue. Everything felt surreal. Lionel reached out to grasp Silvio’s hand in his. He just needed proof of reality.

 

Even as the crowd filed out, Lionel didn’t speak. Silvio squeezed his hand and let go, whispering, “I’ll be right back” and slipping away to curb Brooke’s flame-filled energy. Lionel leaned back against a brick pillar to wait, reflecting on all that had transpired. In just one night he had managed to publicly unmask the underhanded dealings of his university, kiss his editor in chief, and possibly get that editor fired from his position on the paper. Then Troy, the man Lionel had pined over for the better part of a school year, had gotten himself arrested by reacting to the stresses mentioned in “Happy Birthday, Mr. President.”

Everything seemed beyond help.

Silvio returned, and the space between them seemed unnervingly cold in the November chill. Neither made an effort to hold hands again.

“If it wasn't obvious, I don't want you to worry about finishing your interviews tonight.”

Lionel laughed without humor. The mere idea was ridiculous.

“If we’re somehow, miraculously, still on staff,” Silvio clarified.

“Are you still pissed?” Lionel asked.

“Yes. Well, I have a lot to process.”

“Same here.”

Silvio huffed a sigh and watched a group of students en route to Armstrong-Parker. Some signs from the protest still littered the ground, most of which were dropped by Kurt Fletcher and the _Pastiche_ gang. It struck Lionel that today was a Wednesday.

“Silvio…” he said. This drew the attention of those same smoke-brown eyes, but they were full of doubt. “AP House does this thing on Wednesday nights. I mean, would you want to come? Maybe take a break from processing?”

That seemed to strike a chord in Silvio because his expression relaxed and his mouth pulled into a subtle, closed-mouth smile.

“Sure.”

 

_“Defamation_ night is basically the epicenter of black life at Winchester,” Lionel explained.

The walk to Armstrong-Parker had been as pleasant as possible considering the circumstances. Silvio and Lionel had moved close together on the way, shoulders brushing and hearts leaping.

“Hmm,” Silvio hummed contentedly. “The more you know.”

They found some open seats for _Defamation_ and watched as Olive made out with the president. The scene was just horrific enough to distract them from everything.

Lionel glanced sideways at Silvio to find him looking right back. This really was going to be a long night.


	2. Uh

Lmao I just watched Season 2 this fanfic is fucking cancelled peace outie


End file.
